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It’s fitting that 38 State Brewing, a soon-to-open microbrewery in south Littleton, found a home in an old automotive garage.

The brewery has its origins in co-owners Mike and Kim Keating’s own garage a few years ago.

“On the weekends, Brett (Blazek) and I would make beer as often as we could, and then we’d run out. Jason (Virzi) would come over and help us drink it all,” Mike Keating said. “We’d make beer until midnight. Brett’s wife would call and yell at us if we were going too late.”

When it comes to legalized marijuana in Colorado, one area lodging establishment considers it a blessing, while another considers it a curse. For several others, it’s not an issue at all.

The Cliff House Lodge in Morrison still bans tobacco smoking in its cottages, but there’s no problem for marijuana smokers. In contrast, the Comfort Suites at El Rancho doesn’t allow smoking of any kind in its rooms, and it’s fining a fair number of violators since smoking recreational marijuana became legal in Colorado on Jan. 1.

Lockheed Martin Corp.’s South Jeffco-based division has been selected by Mars One, a Netherlands-based nonprofit, for a $250 million mission concept study.

The project will study the feasibility of adapting Lockheed Martin’s Phoenix Mars rover for a 2018 mission to Mars. The Phoenix lander was originally built, designed and operated by Lockheed Martin for NASA’s mission to Mars in 2008.

If the two winners of Littleton’s Youth in Government competition are any indication, the city’s economic future is in good hands.

And the future is all about technology.

Garrett Daly, a senior at Arapahoe High School, and Vanessa Weikel, a junior at Heritage High School, took the top two places respectively in this year’s Youth in Government competition. The competition had 15 students from Littleton design a business concept to operate out of their homes.

While the madness of Black Friday will play out at big-box retailers this week, small businesses in South Jeffco want residents to remember that bigger isn’t necessarily better when it comes to holiday shopping.

Saturday is national Small Business Saturday, an event started in 2010 by American Express to give local businesses their own Black Friday sales day. The event calls on shoppers across the country to forgo the big retail chains and spend their money at locally owned and operated stores.

A new business has blown into town and reinvigorated a once-abandoned building.

Hurricane Grill & Wings now occupies the building of the long-shuttered Ruby Tuesday near AMC Bowles Crossing, near West Bowles Avenue and South Wadsworth Boulevard. The restaurant is the culmination of nearly three years of work, said general manager Michael Garcia. The business, which opened Monday, has hired nearly 100 employees, said Garcia.

Women who have been unemployed for a long period of time frequently have trouble re-entering the workforce, because employers are looking for job candidates with recent experience on their resumes.

It’s a problem that the Littleton store Angel Concept hopes to solve for a few women at a time.

Angel Concept, at 2510 W. Main St. downtown, is a boutique clothing and home-furnishings store with an unusual mission: to provide women who’ve been out of the workforce a chance to get back in it, said founder Sue Hosier.

After seven years of planning and testing at Lockheed Martin’s facility in Waterton Canyon, the MAVEN spacecraft is just a short plane ride and 140 million miles away from its final destination: Mars.

The craft is scheduled to be launched from Cape Canaveral in Florida on Nov. 18. NASA has a 20-day window for the launch; otherwise, the mission will have to be put on hold another two years before Mars and Earth are again in the proper alignment.